The present invention relates to a system for providing music to users.
The traditional technique for selecting music involves listening to the radio and remembering which artists are most appealing to the listener. The listener then may go to the store to purchase a compact disc, tape, or album containing that music. Unfortunately, the compact disk frequently contains numerous songs that the listener does not like. Accordingly, often the listener obtains a compact disk with one, and possibly two, songs which are enjoyable. Further, an artist releases a new compact disc which the listener becomes aware of. Without listening to the songs the listener purchases the compact disc with the expectation that the music will be enjoyable. Unfortunately, the compact disk will periodically be completely devoid of any enjoyable songs. After obtaining a compact disc that is no longer wanted, the user typically sells the compact disk on the secondary market at a substantial discount.
Internet based music retailers, such as www.amazon.com sell compact disks to potential customers. To increase sales and to partially alleviate the unknown quality of the songs for their customers, Internet based music retailers may provide samples of selected songs. This permits the potential customer to make a more informed decision regarding whether to purchase a particular compact disk by listening to the songs prior to purchasing the compact disk. While this is an improvement, the samples of the songs may be misleading as to the nature of the complete song and many songs on the compact disk do not include a sample. In addition, many compact discs do not include any samples at all. Moreover, the customer may have to wait several days for the compact disk to arrive. Further, after purchasing a compact disc that the listener does not like, the purchaser either relegates the compact disk to the drawer or otherwise sells the disk on the secondary market at a substantial discount. Accordingly, the customer may be unsatisfied with his purchase.
Other online retailers provide individual compressed digital audio music files for downloading and purchase by customers. While permitting the downloading of desirable songs without purchasing the entire album, the customer is unable to return the digital audio file for return of the purchase price nor is able to lawfully transfer the digital audio file to others.
Other Internet based services provide peer-to-peer music sharing service. One such service is www.napster.com (as it existed Jan. 1, 2001). Users of the music service sample the music on their compact disks thereby creating compressed music files, such as a motion picture experts group audio layer 3 files, typically referred to as MP3 files. The audio compression from an “uncompressed” compact disk is typically performed by an audio “ripping” program. After compression, the files are typically stored on the user's hard drive. Upon signing into the music sharing service, the compressed audio files on each user's hard drive are made available to all of the other users. In this manner, different users may listen to different music by downloading and listening to the songs available from other users. This provides a convenient technique for sampling different music that the listener may not have otherwise listened to. Unfortunately, the music that is being downloaded may be compressed at different sampling rates, which results in the audio having different qualities. In addition, re-compressing the compressed audio at another sampling rate does not result in as high of recording quality as if the song was originally sampled at the desired sampling rate. Because the system is a peer-to-peer file transfer system, with the server merely providing the network address of the audio files, the actual quality of the compressed audio is unknown. In addition, frequently the compressed audio files do not include the entire song. Further, the download speeds of the compressed audio are limited by the data transfer rate of the network connection of the other user, which is not within the control of the user downloading the compressed audio. Accordingly, it may take substantial time to download the desired audio files. The user may likewise be unable to locate a desired song because it is currently unavailable from other users. Moreover, peer-to-peer audio file servers may require suitable licenses to comply with the current United States Copyright Laws.
What is desired, therefore, is a convenient system for permitting users to listen to selected audio files.